Physical health is important to everyone (whether they admit it or not). Health can be a bit skewed in today’s modern age where the toxin sponges, pharmaceutical fiends, chemical enhancing fanatics, and diet groupies jump from one extreme to the next, faster than you can spell FDA. I’m a millennial (I’ll admit it). What this means is that I was pretty much brought up thinking all these things were the norm. Granted, my mother did make an honorable effort to choose the lesser of two evils, make us eat vegetables, and gargle with salt water. Still, popping pills and guzzling over the counter drugs for every passing illness was, no pun intended, totally natural for us. I never ate an organic anything and would have looked up into the sky if someone shouted “GMO!”Living in a single-parent low income household, we were blessed to eat whatever we had, and often enough, we didn’t have many choices. Which is fine. Many people around the world and yes even in America are in the same boat. There are always limits. I do dare to say though, that there are also choices. I realized that when my pain-point was struck I made choices I didn’t even know I had before. Everyone has a different pain-point. What I mean by this is that there is some area of your existence that if it was threatened you would do whatever it took, sacrifice everything else, take weighty risks, and deny yourself luxuries and pleasures you previously thought necessities, in order to preserve it. For some its a person, stability, for many its comfort, happiness, or maybe a lifelong dream. For me it was something much less substantial but nonetheless it propelled me to start seeking the truth on natural health.

By the time I was 24 years old my body was falling apart. I didn’t look it, mind you. I was as fine as I wanted to be with my MAC makeup (tastefully worn). I worked out on my lunch break at work because I wanted to keep up my figure (health was not my focus). I prioritized paying for a gym membership even though money was tight as a single mother. I ate almost exclusively brown rice, ground turkey and a mixture of frozen vegetables. Never drank soda. Overall, I would have been considered a healthy young adult to the outside world. However, I had many health issues hidden beneath my strategically placed garments. You see, I had always had chronic dry skin, eczema, rubber/latex allergies, and other skin allergies and sensitivities. So since I was a child I worked to cover all socially unacceptable blemishes. I learned to live with a dysfunctional body at a young age and believed there was nothing I could do about it beside manage it with my usual prescriptions. In my early 20’s, I developed a host of health problems such as: major oral health problems, hormonal imbalances, chronic adult acne (when I had never had acne before), MRSA (Staph) Infections that landed me in the ER multiple times, multiple bouts of bronchitis in one year, not to mention women’s health issues; my life became uncomfortable. I was becoming concerned with these random ailments that seemed to be occurring more frequently. When I felt sick I learned to push through and suck it up, but when it came to a public appearance of my unsightly illness all over my skin, now that was unacceptable. Honestly, at that time in my life being beautiful was more important to me than being healthy. God knew exactly what I needed to go through to get my attention in order for me to look into my health. If you go down the list of health problems I mentioned, you will notice that the majority of them affected my skin. I have light golden brown skin. This means that if a mosquito digs into my dermis with its teeny weeny nose, whether I scratch or not, my skin will be dramatically contrasted and scared for at least a few months. Now if something as deep as chronic bulbous acne or a deep sore from a staph infection occurs we’re talking eight years and counting. I was covered in bandaids and packed with gauze to conceal deep staph wounds all over my body. Waking up in the morning entailed a choice to attempt to poorly cover my acne with makeup that would make the situation worse or let my disgusting oozing pimples breath for all the world to see and hope that they’d heal faster. This happened fast and I was not accustomed to living or looking this way. I couldn’t take it anymore. I distinctly remember the day I told my boyfriend that he could not come over because I had a huge swollen painful staph infection over my left eye that made me look like Rocky Balboa against the Russian. I just knew that if he saw me he’d never look at me the same. (He’s my husband now so ironically he’s seen much worse, haha!) I called my mom and cried as I described my unfortunate facial status. I lost it. I needed answers quickly. Basically my mind was screaming, “NOT THE FACE!” I began by shelling out close to $1000 for appointments with specialists, buying expensive skin care products, taking multiple rounds of antibiotics, even getting steroid injections to help my skin and chronic rashes heal.

It was ridiculous. I did everything they told me to and I only got and felt worse. My immune system had been altered and was totally shot. At this point I realized that much more than my looks were on the line. It is sad to me now that I was so shallow then, that a threat to my beauty moved me to action, but I am grateful that God got my attention. During this process (and many others that I’ll have to share with you later) He eradicated my vanity and if it ever tries to rear its ugly head in my heart or amongst my own daughters I address it immediately. With shallow desires cast aside I was able to focus on what mattered most – my health.

I came to understand by my own research (not the warning of the “doctors” pushing me every antibiotic known to man) that the staph infection was totally taking over my body and my life was in danger. I was completely fed up and honestly I was scared that there was no hope for me. I was young and my body just wasn’t working. I was malfunctioning and I didn’t have a clue why and could not fix it. Being the fighter that I am, I took matters into my own hands and went the only place there was to go at that point…. GOOGLE!Go ahead and laugh if you must, but it was there that I found answers, hope, and eventual healing thanks to God-given wisdom and grace. I will have to write multiple posts about the information I have found over the years. I totally naturally cured the staph infection, I rarely have any eczema outbreaks and they are nothing like they used to be, my body naturally balanced out hormonally, and I haven’t had any serious illnesses in 5 years since I started living a life of natural health and wellness.

My methods have included cutting things out of my life and diet, being proactive and preventative with diet and exercise, natural remedies for anything that does attack me or my family, and I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I pray a lot. I don’t follow one particular website, I am skeptical of what I read and quadruple check everything, and I still have much to learn. It is definitely a journey. Baby steps. I am no health coach, expert, or consultant. I am a person who is seeking just like you, but you do have to start somewhere and I would be honored and blessed to be a little piece of your process of healing and living well. I’ll share what I’ve personally experienced. Where I’ve looked. What I’ve read. I’m just talking on my keyboard as you listen with your eyes so please research for yourself and your family. It’s your responsibility and it is important. If you have questions, want to make a request, or share an experience please comment. 🙂